A Galaxy Adrift
This image captures the spiral galaxy NGC 1398, which lies roughly 65 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Fornax. NGC 1398 is a barred spiral galaxy, and both its bright central bar and delicate spiral arms are clearly visible in this image, with the galaxy itself seemingly...
Not a Planet
This gorgeous image resembles an inky patch of space that has been smudged by a giant celestial thumbprint. Actually the object is a planetary nebula named PN M 2-53. It was imaged using the Gemini North telescope of the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab. Planetary...
A Mysterious Rash of Star Birth
"A Mysterious Rash of Star Birth In this crisp Gemini North image, pink bubbles of glowing hydrogen gas spread across the arms of the face-on spiral galaxy NGC 6946 like a rash. This amazing infusion of color is fueled by the ubiquitous birth of massive stars throughout NGC 6946; these hot...
Heart of the Crab
In the heart of the Crab Nebula (Messier 1) a neutron star is rotating 30 times every single second. This pirouetting star, known as the Crab Pulsar, consists purely of neutrons, and has an intense magnetic field which ejects jets of material from its poles at nearly the speed of light. The...
M27 Dumbbell Nebula
This image was obtained with the wide-field view of the Mosaic camera on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory. M27, also known as the 'Dumbbell Nebula', is a famous planetary nebula. The central portion of the nebula is quite bright, however it also has a faint outer...
The Starry Dandelion and the Cosmic Gecko NGC 6520
Millions of years ago, a dust cloud about 5,200 light-years from the Sun coalesced to begin the process of star birth. Today, some 190 million years later, NGC 6520 is ablaze with hot, massive young stars arrayed in a dandelion seed-shaped cluster. Not far away lies the gecko-shaped remains of...
Around the star cluster Terzan 5
This wide-field image, based on data from Digitized Sky Survey 2, shows the whole region around the stellar grouping Terzan 5.
Invisible Galactic Gale
NGC 4666 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic spiral galaxy lies about 80 million light-years away in the constellation Virgo, and is undergoing a particularly intense episode of star formation. Astronomers refer to galaxies which are forming...
Something Out There Is Watching You
Do you ever look up at the night sky and feel like someone, or something, may be looking back at you? This Halloween image from NASAs Spitzer Space Telescope may convince you that you are right. Dont expect to see these cosmic eyes without a face if you search the night sky with your own...
M43: Part of Orion Nebula
M43 is part of the much larger Orion Nebula complex. Here we see an extremely bright OB star that is creating a matter bound Stromgren sphere. This means that the star is ionizing the gas that is near it, making a sphere of glowing (pink) hydrogen gas. The size of this sphere is determined by...
M57 (Ring Nebula)
The ring nebula is probably one of the most famous deep sky objects. Generally when amateurs begin their telescopic journey, after the Orion Nebula, the Ring is one of the next objects on the list. Even through a small telescope its bright and distinctive shape sets it apart from a typical...
NGC 7008
Sometimes nicknamed the Fetus, this planetary nebula is located about 2800 lightyears away in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Remember that planetary nebulae are regions of stellar death, not birth as the nickname "Fetus" would imply. This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing...
NGC 6302: The Butterfly Nebula
This planetary nebula, which looks remarkably like a butterfly, is located about 3800 lightyears away in the constellation Scorpius. To see it in higher resolution, take a peek at the Hubble Space Telescope's image using the WFC3 instrument. This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing...
Snake Nebula
Perhaps this is from when jealous Hera snatched one of the snakes she sent to dispatch baby Hercules in his crib? The picture here shows obscuring clouds of dust towards the center of our galaxy. The left of the frame begins with B78 at the end of the much larger "pipe" nebula. The snake-like...
Rosette Nebula
The appropriately named Rosette nebula is, not unlike a newly bloomed flower, a place of newfound life. Many of the stars within this wreath of gas have just formed. Their energetic winds and emissions of UV radiation are quickly blowing away the surrounding clouds of gas to reveal a new...
NGC 7048
This beautiful planetary nebula is located within the rich constellation of Cygnus the Swan. This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
NGC 2023
This nebula surrounds a large B type star at a distance of 1600 light years from the sun. B type stars typically have a surface temperature somewhere in the range of 11,000 - 25,000 Kelvins. In comparison the sun has a temperature of 5,000 Kelvins. This star forming region has a particle...
NGC 1977: The Running Man Nebula
This reflection nebula, commonly known as the Running Man Nebula, is located about 1500 lightyears away next to the famous Orion Nebula. This image was taken as part of Advanced Observing Program (AOP) program at Kitt Peak Visitor Center during 2014.
Vdb142 in IC1396: The Elephant Trunk Nebula
IC 1396, also known as the Elephant Trunk Nebula, is another region of recent star formation. Many stars in this area are less than a couple hundred thousand years old - very young in the grand scheme of astronomy, where stars live to be billions of years old! The hot young stars are in the...
The Egg Nebula
This object is classified as a bipolar protoplanetary nebula - bipolar due to its symmetric, two-component structure and protoplanetary because it is the precursor to a true planetary nebula. It is about 3000 lightyears away in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. This image was taken as part of...
"Double, double toil and trouble..." Alas, had MacBeth seen this nebula in the sky his portentous future would have been as obvious to him as it was to the witches that begin Shakespeare's play. Not unlike the foul vapors that curl from the witches cauldron, IC2118 wafts through space at a...
A Closer Look at Hubble’s 31st Anniversary Snapshot
This comparison view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star.You can explore the detail of the nebula surrounding the star AG Carinae by using the slider tool on the image above. This Picture of the Week showcases new views of the dual nature of...
On Clusters and Constellations
This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to the centre of the Milky...
A Closer Look at Hubble’s 31st Anniversary Snapshot
This comparison view shows puffing dust bubbles and an erupting gas shell — the final acts of a monster star.You can explore the detail of the nebula surrounding the star AG Carinae by using the slider tool on the image above. This Picture of the Week showcases new views of the dual nature of...
Wide-Field View of GAL-CLUS-022058s
This image shows a wide-field view of GAL-CLUS-022058s.
Rings of Relativity
The narrow galaxy elegantly curving around its spherical companion in this image is a fantastic example of a truly strange and very rare phenomenon. This image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, depicts GAL-CLUS-022058s, located in the southern hemisphere constellation of Fornax...
Massive Star VY Canis Majoris - Visible Light
Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory, Kameula, Hawaii, astronomers have learned that the gaseous outflow from one of the brightest super-sized stars in the sky is more complex than originally thought. The outbursts are from VY Canis Majoris, a red supergiant star...
Nearby dust clouds in the Milky Way
The yearly ritual of spring cleaning clears a house of dust as well as dust "bunnies", those pesky dust balls that frolic under beds and behind furniture. NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed similar dense knots of dust and gas in our Milky Way Galaxy. This cosmic dust, however, is...
Squabbling Galactic Siblings
A dramatic triplet of galaxies takes centre stage in this latest Picture of the Week from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, which captures a three-way gravitational tug-of-war between interacting galaxies. This system —known as Arp 195— is featured in the Atlas of Peculiar Galaxies, a list...
Wading through water
This striking image combines data gathered with the Advanced Camera for Surveys, installed on the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and data from the Subaru Telescope in Hawaii. It shows just a part of the spectacular tail emerging from a spiral galaxy nicknamed D100. Tails such as these are...
Large and small stars in harmonious coexistence
The latest photo from the Hubble Space Telescope, presented at the 2006 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Prague this week, shows a star forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). This sharp image reveals a large number of low-mass infant stars coexisting with...
Edge-on galaxy hosts supernova explosion
The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has imaged an elongated stream of stars, gas and dust called IC 755, which is actually a spiral galaxy that we are seeing edge-on. In 1999 a star within IC 755 was seen to explode as a supernova and named SN 1999an. The supernova was discovered by the Beijing...
Hunting for Dead Stars
This image depicts a swirling spiral galaxy named NGC 2906. The blue speckles seen scattered across this galaxy are massive young stars, which emit hot, blue-tinged radiation as they burn through their fuel at an immense rate. The swathes of orange are a mix of older stars that have swollen...
NGC 6302
This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 6302, commonly known as the Butterfly Nebula. NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. The glowing gas was once the star's outer layers, but has been expelled over...
Wide Field View of M13
This image shows a wide-field view of M3.
Wide Field View of M3
This image shows a wide-field view of M13.
The Stellar Forge
An orange glow radiates from the centre of NGC 1792, the heart of this stellar forge. Captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, this intimate view of NGC 1792 gives us some insight into this galactic powerhouse. The vast swathes of tell-tale blue seen throughout the galaxy indicate areas...
A Glittering Globular Cluster
This star-studded image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope depicts NGC 6717, which lies more than 20 000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius. NGC 6717 is a globular cluster, a roughly spherical collection of stars tightly bound together by gravity. Globular clusters...
M3, NGC 5272
A sixth magnitude globular cluster in the constellation Canes Venatici, this ball of 500,000 stars is approximately 160 light-years across and 100,000 light-years from Earth. This image of M3 is a combination of a B-band image and a Z-band image (Z is approximately from 8500 to 9500 A) taken on...
Area surrounding the Sunburst Arc (ground-based image)
This wide field view of the night sky shows the region in which the galaxy nicknamed the Sunburst Arc is located.
Butterfly emerges from stellar demise in planetary nebula NGC 6302
This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene. What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to nearly 20 000 degrees Celsius. The gas is tearing across space at more than 950 000 kilometres per hour — fast enough to travel...
Four Famous Nebulae
These four nebulae (star-forming clouds of gas and dust) are known for their breathtaking beauty: the Eagle Nebula (which contains the Pillars of Creation), the Omega Nebula, the Trifid Nebula, and the Lagoon Nebula. In the 1950s, a team of astronomers made rough distance measurements to some of...
Famous Fornax Galaxy
Fornax A is a galaxy with a very active black hole in its core that is spraying radio waves out into enormous jets. Here, the white glow in the center is the visible galaxy NGC 1316 that you can see through the constellation of Fornax. Notice the wee spiral galaxy above it? These two galaxies are...
Warped Disk of Galaxy UGC 3697
The \"Integral Sign\'\' galaxy, UGC 3697 is an edge-on spiral galaxy with an unusually pronounced warp in both its stellar and gaseous disks. The neutral Hydrogen gas, represented in blue, is overlaid on an optical image of the stars of the galaxy. Unlike in normal spiral galaxies, the brightest...
Cosmic Tango of UGC 813
The \"Taffy\" galaxies are the results of a collision between two galaxies, UGC 813 (right) and UGC 816 (left). They were normal disk galaxies before they collided face-on at a speed of one million miles per hour about 50 million years ago. The disks of stars and dense clouds of molecular gas...
Arp 148 (Visible & Infrared)
This image shows galaxy Arp 148, captured by NASA's Spitzer and Hubble telescopes.
Revealing the Supernova in Arp 148
This image shows galaxy Arp 148, captured by NASA's Spitzer and Hubble telescopes. Inside the white circle is specially-processed Spitzer data, which reveals infrared light from a supernova that is hidden by dust. Supernovae are massive stars that have exploded after running out of fuel. They...
Rings Around the Galaxy (Annotated)
Three newly-discovered streams arcing high over the Milky Way Galaxy are remnants of cannibalized galaxies and star clusters. The streams are between 13,000 and 130,000 light-years distant from Earth and extend over much of the Northern sky.
Disk Around Red Dward Stars in the Stephenson 34 System
Astronomers were surprised to discover a 25-million-year-old protoplanetary disk around a pair of red dwarf stars 350 light-years away. Gravitational stirring by the binary star system may have prevented planet formation.
Cosmic Fountain of Crystal Rain
This graphic illustrates a stellar fountain of crystal rain, beginning with a Spitzer picture of the star in question, and ending with an artist's concept of what the crystal "rain" might look like.
Artist's Impression of "Hot Jupiter" Exoplanets
This image shows an artist's impression of the 10 hot Jupiter exoplanets studied using the Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes. From top left to lower left, these planets are WASP-12b, WASP-6b, WASP-31b, WASP-39b, HD 189733b, HAT-P-12b, WASP-17b, WASP-19b, HAT-P-1b and HD 209458b.
Jets of outflowing gas burst from a forming star still accumulating material from the surrounding disk.
Alien Asteroid Belt Compared to our Own
This artist's concept illustrates what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical alien planet in a star system with an asteroid belt 25 times as massive as the one in our own solar system (alien system above, ours below).
Artist's Conception of Sedna
Artist's conception of Sedna, a planet-like object so far away that the Sun appears as an extremely bright star instead of the large, warm disc observed from Earth.
NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has at last found buckyballs in space, as illustrated by this artist's conception showing the carbon balls coming out from the type of object where they were discovered.
Model of AU Microscopii Disk
This is a so-called scatter model based on the Hubble Space Telescope image of the planetary debris encircling the star AU Microscopii.
This illustration shows three possible scenarios for the evolution of asteroid belts.
This artist's concept shows a cloudy Jupiter-like planet that orbits very close to its fiery hot star. NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope was recently used to capture spectra, or molecular fingerprints, of two "hot Jupiter" worlds like the one depicted here.
Black Hole vs. Star: A Tidal Disruption Event (Artist's Concept)
An artist's concept of a tidal disruption event (TDE) that happens when a star passes fatally close to a supermassive black hole, which reacts by launching a relativistic jet.
Portrait of a Swirling Galaxy
The spiral galaxy IC 1954 takes centre stage in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The galaxy, which lies approximately 45 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Horologium (The Clock), boasts a bright central bar and lazily winding spiral arms threaded with dark...
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